Friday, August 17, 2012

MJ-12: Beating the Dead Horse

I have been reviewing the history of MJ-12 and I have found something interesting. The first mention of MJ-12 was not when Bill and Jaime Shandera received the undeveloped film. It wasn’t even when Moore was planning a novel with Bob Pratt, one-time editor of the MUFON Journal and former reporter for the National Enquirer.

No, the first mention of MJ-12 was in 1981 in a one page document that seemed to be a legitimate AFOSI teletype message that has become known as the Aquarius Telex or the Aquarius Document. It is, in fact, a retyped version of an AFOSI report on UFOs photographed and filmed by Paul Bennewitz over Albuquerque, New Mexico. Although the majority of this document seems to be from a real report, there is one line that is not in the original. It says, “Results of Project Aquarius is still classified Top Secret with no dissemination outside official Intelligence channels and with restricted access to MJ - Twelve. [Emphasis added.]”

Here was a mention of MJ-12 that seemed to have gone unnoticed. A few UFO researchers attempted to learn about Project Aquarius with little luck but none seemed interested, at that time, in MJ-12. Eventually some, such as Lee Graham and Barry Greenwood, using FOIA, attempted to find additional information. Graham learned more when Bill Moore showed him a copy of the Eisenhower Briefing Document. Graham was able to provide a list of the names of those associated with MJ-12 to Greenwood.

The point is, however, that MJ-12 was mentioned long before the undeveloped film arrived in 1984. Moore, in fact, contacted Bob Pratt and told him about MJ-12 in 1982 with the idea of writing a book. Pratt felt that Moore didn’t have enough evidence to warrant a nonfiction book, but thought they could discuss it in a novel. Pratt’s working title? MAJIK – 12.

I have, over the last several months attempted to get the major proponents of MJ-12 to discuss this. Robert Wood has responded that he was going to do something about it, let me know what he thought about it, but that response has not arrived. Stan Friedman wrote, in response to my first inquiry that he was about to catch a plane but would have something later. He has yet to provide that, let alone respond to my last email.

MJ-12 didn’t just appear when the film arrived at Shandera’s house. It had been mentioned before, and a novel had been written about it. Pratt thought, when the MJ-12 stories hit the press in 1987, they should attempt to sell the novel once again. He wrote to Moore suggesting that, but never got a response.

You have to wonder about the reality of something that appeared for the first time in a document that was later to be declared a hoax (or rather the version that MJ-12 was a retyped version that added the line about Project Aquarius and MJ-12). Here’s the thing that hasn’t been discussed. Let us say that there is a highly classified project known as MJ-12… So secret that virtually nothing about it has been found. Now suppose that you want to introduce disinformation into the UFO community to confound it, and you have a mission of discrediting Paul Bennewitz because his research could expose a real, non UFO related but classified project. You create a fake document and ensure that it falls into his hands, hoping he would run to the media with it. Once he had done that, then you whip out the real document to prove he has an altered one… and you imply that he is responsible for the alteration and you demonstrate that he is unreliable.

So far, so good. But the very last thing you are going to do is put in that disinformation the name of a real, highly classified project that is so secret that no one outside a small exclusive circle knows about. To do so would be expose that project to scrutiny by UFO researchers who are responsible for thousands upon thousands of FOIA requests. You’ve now given them information that they shouldn’t have. There is no reason to expose MJ-12, if it exists, in a document meant to discredit Bennewitz.
In other words, this first mention of MJ-12 in this document that is an admitted retyping of an actual AFOSI message means that MJ-12 is fraudulent. The MJ-12 committee doesn’t exist… and those who retyped the AFOSI message (Bill Moore admitted it was a retype at a meeting of FUFOR) would not have access to that information. They couldn’t put MJ-12 into it because they would never have heard of it. This Aquarius Telex then, argues against the existence of MJ-12. This was a misstep by those who were inventing MJ-12. It should not have surfaced so early. It should have remained hidden until the film arrived. This, you might say, is the clue that undoes MJ-12

22 comments:

David Rudiak said...

Kevin, I think we are in agreement that there would have/should have been a top-level UFO control committee to deal with the potential UFO threat, whether Gen. Exon's Pentagon "Unholy 13", the Wilbert Smith/Sarbacher documents about the UFO control group in the Research and Development Board directed by Vannevar Bush, the NSC, or whatever. It wouldn't surprise me if different agencies ran parallel investigations. Many of the same cast of characters could be in any of these groups (current CIA director, current Sec. of Defense, current AF Chief of Staff, etc., etc.)

The code-name for this group is a secondary matter. The most likely candidate, IMHO, was the DRB group revealed by Wilbert Smith's geniuine Candadian Dept. of Transport memo of 1950 and subsequent Canadian documents. These began to surface in 1978 and 1979 from Canadian researcher Arthur Bray, at first known to only a few researchers in the UFO community.

It would make sense that a diversionary counterintelligence "MJ-12" group would begin to emerge in 1981 as a diversion from the real documents about the DRB group under Bush. But the real group did exist, but probably under some other name.

The purpose of counterintelligence and disinformation is to put so much crap into the system that it is hard to tell the real from the phony. Also wastes people's time trying to chase it down, causes infighting amongst researchers, can discredit researchers who advocate too strongly for it, only to have it shot down later, etc. Wonderful stuff disinformation for keeping secrets.

cda said...

DR writes:

"These began to surface in 1978 and 1979 from Canadian researcher Arthur Bray, at first known to only a few researchers in the UFO community."

These "few researchers" (two persons in particular) are the very ones who created the MJ-12 forgeries. The whole idea of an MJ-12 committee, together with it being headed by Vannevar Bush, originated from Wilbert Smith's 1950 memo.

Although Smith's initial memo talks about this so-called UFO control group The "subsequent Canadian documents" referred to by DR do not refer to any such group.

As I discovered from Smith's boss Omond Solandt in 1989 (without even asking him), Smith never had any 'Top secret' clearance in his Canadian Transport Dept work and thus had no right to classify his Geomagnetics paper as such.

One little point: The Aquarius paper refers not to 'MJ-12' but to 'MJ TWELVE'. Notice that the fake Truman memo also refers to MJ Twelve, not MJ-12. Perhaps Kevin can see why 'Twelve' was used instead of '12' in the Truman memo.

The GAO mentions the Aquarius document in an appendix to their report on the Roswell incident, saying the AFOSI labelled it a forgery.

cda said...

I will add one further note.

Presumably General Exon only talked about his 'Unholy 13' group after Kevin, or someone else, told him about MJ-12. In other words, Exon was seeking, in a way, to do a bit of oneupmanship on MJ-12 (i.e. 13 instead of 12).

I wonder if Exon would ever have brought in his Unholy 13 had nobody mentioned or suggested MJ-12 to him.

And one extra point: MJ-12 was a group of 13 anyway, since Stanton Friedman has claimed that General Walter Bedell Smith was in reality the 13th man.

falkenhorst said...

The 'Unholy 13' reference is in fact a George Hunt Williamson reference from the 1950's. GHW's romantic use doesnt involve MJ material except to preempt the later:
Major Donald E. Keyhoe: 'documents over one thousand instances where fighter plans have been scrambled to attack UFO's'.
Professor Robert Spencer Carr:' ...back in the days when this material evidence came into the possession of Air Intelligence... we were in the worst days of the so called cold war.
And when the spacecraft itself with the twelve dead occupants was picked up, then of course the Central Intelligence Agency had to intervene... when a foreign intrusion occurs, the appearance of the CIA on the scene is prima fascia evidence that the UFOs are real. Let me repeat, the CIA would never have taken over had there not been real UFOs from another world."

KRandle said...

Good Evening, All -

As we slide off into tengential issues, once again, let me say this...

David -

I do not believe that MJ-12 is disinformation, meaning a government program. I believe it to be misinformation concocted by three specific individuals for their own purposes. I know that you, Barry Greenwood and Brad Sparks would disagree with this, but the real point is that whoever created it has diverted attention from important issues.

CDA -

The Truman memo refers to "Operation Majestic Twelve."

You again invent evidence. There is nothing to suggest that Exon was aware of the MJ-12 prior to my interviews with him. I will say again, that he made an off-hand reference the group, at the end of my interview with him. He said, "...I'd be surprised if you found much in the records of FTD or like that because it was so closely held... If it originated there it ended up being part of the unholy thirteen group... the people who were involved in it."

Earlier he had talked about a high-ranking group of people, both military and civilian, who were on the inside of UFO investigation. He suggested there might have been twelve to fifteen. He was not suggesting that the name of the group was the unholy thirteen, but used that as a colloquialism... People often refer to a group, any group, that they don't understand or know little about as an "unholy thirteen," which might have some bibical significance.

falkenhorst -

George Hunt Williamson has nothing to do with this discussion (nor does Keyhoe or Carr for that matter) other than sort of prove my point about "unholy thirteen" being in the public consciousness. It was an off hand remark by Exon that has gained way too much significane.

David Rudiak said...

Kevin wrote:

There is nothing to suggest that Exon was aware of the MJ-12 prior to my interviews with him. I will say again, that he made an off-hand reference the group, at the end of my interview with him. He said, "...I'd be surprised if you found much in the records of FTD or like that because it was so closely held... If it originated there it ended up being part of the unholy thirteen group... the people who were involved in it."

Part of the Robert Sarbacher/Wilbert Smith story was Sarbacher saying the RDB meetings on crashed saucers took place at Wright-Patterson, which was one reason he begged off. The point here is that the FTD is at W-P, making it a logical place to have such meetings.

Sarbacher also led researchers to Dr. Eric Walker, who was Exec. Secretary of the Research and Development Board in 1950, saying Walker would know all about it. When Walker was first contacted by William Steinman, he admitted to such meetings at W-P, then said he would have to consult his notes. The was about the last bit of candidness anyone got out of Walker, who thereafter mostly played games, often saying researchers should forget about it since there was little they could do unless they were another Einstein.

Ruppelt also hints several times at a parallel secret group or groups doing their own UFO investigations, such as when Vandenberg killed Project Sign (most of the investigation now being done by the "other investigative group" that had been assisting them) and during the Lubbock Lights (“The only other people outside Project Blue Book who have studied the complete case of the Lubbock Lights were a group who, due to their associations with the government, had complete access to our files. ...they were scientists—rocket experts, nuclear physicists, and intelligence experts. They had banded together to study our UFO reports because they were convinced that some of the UFO’s that were being reported were interplanetary spaceships...”).

Brad Sparks thought the Lubbock Light's group was the CIA's Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I), not the so-called MJ-12. But he also noted that OS/I became the primary investigative group since Jan. 1949 for (drumroll)--the Research and Development Board, which Wilbert Smith 1950 memo and later documents implicated as housing the super-secret UFO group headed by Vannevar Bush.

The CIA's OS/I was also the group tasked with investigating UFOs following the July 1952 Washington flap. (Remember Ruppelt also wrote he was told by some high-organization scientist that the pattern of UFO reports suggested the mother of all sightings would soon take place in either New York City or Washington D.C. This was probably the CIA again.) The CIA OS/I study soon led to the debunking Robertson Panel, which effectively gutted the semi-public Blue Book as any sort of serious body of investigation, turning it into more of a public relations organization, while serious investigation was turned over to other units, as Kevin as written elsewhere.

Steve Sawyer said...

@KR:

"I do not believe that MJ-12 is disinformation, meaning a government program. I believe it to be misinformation concocted by three specific individuals for their own purposes."

[emphasis added]

From all that I've read and discussed with various researchers over the years, I'm guessing that two of the three individuals you're referring to include Bill Moore and Richard Doty, is that correct?

But who are you referring to as the "third man" in your troika of MJ-12 hoaxers? Jaime Shandera? Or someone else, and if so, who?

And who do you think created the SOM 1-01 "manual"?

falkenhorst said...

thanks kevin.
'thousands of pursuits' and no coherent emphasis resides because an interviewed person denies it?

You may have misinterpreted the GWH reference to 'romantic'.

GWH--as far as i am aware-- was the first to assign the numbers of craft that his groups had been advised of.

Could we agree instead that 'The Space Confederation' (in contra-distinction to MJ-12 possibly existing)--and space craft themselves-are factual?

cda said...

Stan Friedman has maintained that the 3 primary MJ-12 papers are authentic, but that the rest (i.e. the numerous ones emanating from Tim Cooper and others in later years) are mostly frauds. This is not because he wants to present a balanced analysis but because Stan himself was so heavily involved in the archival research needed for the forgers to produce the 3 main documents. Hence they cannot, in his estimate, be fakes in any way.

These researches started with the files of Vannevar Bush in the National Archives. This arose purely from Bush being mentioned in the infamous Smith 1950 memo on 'Geomagnetics'. We can safely assume that had Bush's name not appeared therein, his name would not have appeared in the MJ-12 papers either.

As an aside, why was Smith's memo marked 'Top Secret' anyway? I assume it was an afterthought on his part to keep it to himself and maybe a very few select others. Maybe he did not want people prying into his pet project. Hence its downgrading years later. I wonder how many even saw this memo during the years following 1950. Also, who divulged Bush's name to him? Keyhoe maybe? No it was NOT Sarbacher.

The normal practice is to mark and stamp 'Top Secret' on every page of a document, not just its first page. An oddity. But an oddity that launched a fraud whose name resonates today and will continue to do so for decades.

RobertIII said...

A little OT but it's a BZ Too!

Just read your book "Crash" and wanted to say thank you! A friend of mine is interested in the UFO topic and has been pestering me to poke around in it a bit. If I hadn't found your book, I would have written it all off as bad science and given up. So many hypotheses and conspiracies with so little carefully filtered and vetted information to make them on. And so much PSB (pseudo-scientific you-know-what!)

"Crash" satisfied me that someone is actually filtering and vetting information, and is able to acknowledge bad info and mistakes, the most important and toughest part of the research process. I see it here on the blog also, and greatly appreciate it.

Get the rest of your work on B+N for Nook!

Cheers/Robert (US Navy Retired)

Larry said...

Part 1

Kevin said:

“In other words, this first mention of MJ-12 in this document that is an admitted retyping of an actual AFOSI message means that MJ-12 is fraudulent. The MJ-12 committee doesn’t exist… and those who retyped the AFOSI message (Bill Moore admitted it was a retype at a meeting of FUFOR) would not have access to that information. They couldn’t put MJ-12 into it because they would never have heard of it….”

OK, let’s agree, for the sake of argument that this document IS most likely a retyping of an actual AFOSI message. By itself, that does not necessarily support the conclusion that “…those who retyped the AFOSI message … couldn’t put MJ-12 into it because they would never have heard of it….”.

The “gang of 3” somehow managed to have heard the previously unknown fact that “Aquarius” is a real code word protected project, several years before that fact was made public by the NSA response to the FOIA request. It seems to me that that fact is an empirical refutation of your reasoning, regardless of how logical it seems to be. I think the probability that the “gang of 3” could identify a real Special Access Project (SAP) code name by means of a lucky, random guess is vanishingly small. I think they would almost have to have had leaked inside information.

If the “gang of 3” had inside knowledge of the existence of one SAP, it’s not a stretch to think they might have had knowledge about more than one—presumably from the same source. The logical suspect to be that source, of course is Richard Doty who—as an AFOSI agent—would have had a high level security clearance.

Do the thought experiment; anyone can easily fabricate a document consisting of nothing but true statements and then falsely attribute the origin of that document to someone else—the AFOSI in this case. Such a document would accurately be described as “bogus” and “a forgery” because it purports to have been written by one author when, in fact, it was written by another. The fact that it is bogus does not say anything one way or another about the truth or falsity of individual ideas or words within the document.

Larry said...

Part 2

Also, CDA makes a possibly significant point when he notes that the telex uses the words “Majestic Twelve” (spelled out), rather than the alphanumeric “MJ-12” or “Majestic-12”. The overwhelming majority of “Majestic Documents” purported to have been leaked from official sources over the years bear either “MJ-12” or “Majestic-12” stamped markings. (According to Majestic lore, the overall program consisted of two main SAP compartments, code-named Majestic, and Jehovah. Hence, the designation “MJ-12” would presumably refer to the group controlling access to both compartments. The term “Majestic-12” would refer to only one of the two compartments.)

I would speculate (and I clearly identify it as such) that the information that was leaked to the “gang of 3” by inside sources may have been transmitted verbally. That would have left it up to the 3 to transcribe it into written symbols using their own judgment. If they had no written material for reference, they may have simply guessed at the correct spelling, and gotten it wrong. I would also note in passing that if the correct spelling of a SAP is “MJ-12” and someone leaks the name “Majestic Twelve”, they are not technically revealing any potentially classified information. Likewise, if someone puts in a FOIA request for “Majestic Twelve” information and is told by the responding agency that there is no such information, the agency would be telling the truth if the information was actually referenced to “MJ-12”. Further, if “MJ-12” was an unacknowledged SAP (USAP)--as I suspect it would be--then the responding agency would be required to lie, if necessary, to prevent disclosure, even if they knew the USAP existed.

KRandle said...

Larry -

Actually, the Telex says, "MJ-Twelve...

The Telex is a retype... Bill Moore, according to Dick Hall, told FUFOR that he had retyped it because it was difficult to read. He then pasted the various heading on it so that it would look like a real document.

Later, under close questioning, Hall said that Moore had said the document was a retype of a real one, but Hall was no longer sure if Moore said he had retyped it or not. Moore was clear that this was an attempt to discredit Paul Bennewitz but Bennewitz didn't take the bait...

So, the Telex is without provenance. We trace it to Moore and no further.

Second, the fact they mention a real classified project (Aquarius) is almost irrelevant. Google Project Aquarius and see how many there are out there. Yes, most have nothing to do with this. One is from Apple for example.

Third, by what authority do you suggest that the forgers coming up with a real classified project by accident or coincidence are vanishingly small.

During World War II it seems that many code words made it into the public arena. As the allies begin the run up to the Normandy Invasion, intelligence officers were horrified to learn that many of the code words relating to the invasion had appeared in the London Daily Mirror crossword puzzle. These included Gold, Sword, Juno, Utah and Omaha, which were the code names of the landing beaches. The puzzle also used Overlord, the code name of the invasion, Mulberry, which was the code for the floating harbors, and finally Neptune, the code name for the Navy assault… What are the odds that all of this would appear in a single source in the weeks prior to the invasion. Intelligence officers were concerned that there was a leak but found it was all a coincidence.

What evidence do you have that Aquarius is a UFO related project, other than the documents without a provenance and a couple of dubious sources who claim otherwise? In other words, it is not vanishingly ing small that the forgers would blunder onto a code word that is real.

cda said...

Any ideas where the term 'EBE' came from? The MJ-12 papers would have us believe it was coined by Detlev Bronk in 1947. Presumably nobody except Stan Friedman still believes this. So who did invent the term, and when?

Any offers? Yes it MAY have been Bennewitz, but can we demonstrate this?

KRandle said...

CDA -

Without wasting too much time on it, and considering the source I'm not impressed, but...

W. Todd Zechel, The MJ-12/Aquarius Hoax, privately published, 1989, p. 4 It is in this document that Zechel claims that Bennewitz came up with theterm, “Extraterrestrial Biological Entity” (EBE), which would figure prominently.

Larry said...

Part 1.

Kevin said:

1. “Actually, the Telex says, "MJ-Twelve...”

Yes, I know. That’s what I was trying to say; maybe my intent wasn’t clear.

2. “The Telex is a retype... We trace it to Moore and no further.”

Again, I agree. I am not disputing that point.

3. “Second, the fact they mention a real classified project (Aquarius) is almost irrelevant. Google Project Aquarius and see how many there are out there. Yes, most have nothing to do with this. One is from Apple for example.”

What is irrelevant is the fact that entities other than NSA may have used the Aquarius project name at some earlier or later time. The only relevant fact is that the NSA was actually using it at the only time the telex writers implied they were.

4. “Third, by what authority do you suggest that the forgers coming up with a real classified project by accident or coincidence are vanishingly small.

A reasonable question. In order to answer it, we have to be able to estimate the probability of occurrence of various possibilities, in a quantitative (i.e., mathematical) manner. I’ll try to go through the argument as simply and clearly as possible so that non-mathematicians don’t get lost.

Basically, it starts with the number of different words in the English language. According to Google (the source of all knowledge) the precise number is squishy, but probably in the vicinity of 200,000. This estimate is based on the fact that there are slightly more than 170,000 words in recent versions of the Oxford English Dictionary. There are an additional estimated 25,000 to 30,000 that are archaic, slang, or otherwise not deemed fit for inclusion in the OED. So, I am rounding the size of the English lexicon off to approximately 200,000. Suppose that there were x number of SAP code words active within the NSA in 1981. If I make a guess that a random English word (such as “Aquarius”) is a real NSA code word, I have x chances of being right (even if I don’t know how big x is). The probability I’m correct is 1 divided by x. (It doesn’t matter that Apple computer or any one else has a project Aquarius—only whether NSA does.) The probability I’m wrong is 1 divided by (200,000 minus x). The relative size of these two probabilities represents the odds that I’m right. If there are 100 active SAPs, then I am approximately 2000 times more likely to be wrong than right. If there are 1000 active SAPs, then I am approximately 200 times more likely to be wrong than right. If there are 10,000 active SAPs, then I am approximately 20 times more likely to be wrong than right, and so on.

Larry said...

Part 2.

I don’t have any hard data on how many active SAPs there were within NSA in 1981 and I would guess that no one on this blog does either, since that information is probably classified. But, I am of the opinion that it was probably in the hundreds, not in the thousands based on the fact that Special Access Programs are—well, special. They are expensive, their numbers are supposed to be kept to a minimum (so that Congress can maintain oversight) and there is a highly controlled and restricted number of individuals given the TS/SCI clearances necessary to work on them. My security specialist tells me that the fraction of TS clearances that can be awarded the SCI caveat is kept to about 10% or less of the total. The most recent data released via the Federation of American Scientists indicates that there are currently about 1.4 million individuals in the US with TS clearances. The number of security clearances in the US has burgeoned in the last decade due to the aftermath of 9-11 in which the Department of Homeland Security was created. If you roll the calendar back to 1981, I would estimate there were probably closer to 1.0 million individuals with a TS clearance and therefore about 100,000 with TS/SCI. If there were as many as 10,000 SAPs in the entire US Government in 1981, that would have averaged only 10 cleared individuals for every SAP. That’s a ridiculously small number. My hunch is that the number of SAPs in the entire US Government in 1981 was probably closer to about 1000, of which only a fraction were in the NSA, giving a probability of around 1 in 1000 of being able to guess an NSA code name. That may not be vanishingly small, but it’s small--only 1/10 of 1%.

Larry said...

Part 3.


5. “During World War II it seems that many code words made it into the public arena.”

Not exactly; words were extracted from the public arena and used as code words. The public never stopped using them, however.

6. “As the allies begin the run up to the Normandy Invasion, intelligence officers were horrified to learn that many of the code words relating to the invasion had appeared in the London Daily Mirror crossword puzzle. These included Gold, Sword, Juno, Utah and Omaha, which were the code names of the landing beaches. The puzzle also used Overlord, the code name of the invasion, Mulberry, which was the code for the floating harbors, and finally Neptune, the code name for the Navy assault… What are the odds that all of this would appear in a single source in the weeks prior to the invasion. Intelligence officers were concerned that there was a leak but found it was all a coincidence.”

The odds of this kind of thing happening obey a different set of calculations. If I’m in Military Intelligence and I select a word that’s in public use to serve as a code word, but the general public does not know that, how likely is it that I will see that code word appearing in public discourse, simply by chance? First of all, Its frequency of use in public should not change simply because I’ve secretly decided to use it as a code word. My likelihood of seeing it in public use depends on how big the word stream is I sample from the public discourse (newspapers, radio shows, intercepted mail, telegrams, and diplomatic cables, etc.) If the total number of words in the language were distributed at random in that word stream, and I take a sample of size, N, from that stream, then the statistics that define the probability of occurrence of my code word in that stream are given by the binomial distribution (which can be looked up on Wikipedia for those interested). The pattern is actually pretty simple; if my sample size, N, is equal to the number of words in the English language (200,000) then the most likely number of times my code word would be expected to appear in that sample is approximately once. If I took two different samples of size N, I would expect my code word to appear approximately twice, and so on.

Of course, not all words are distributed randomly in the lexicon under normal usage. Suppose my code word is 10 times less likely to appear than the average frequency? If my sample size is 10 times the size of the lexicon (2 million words), then I would expect to see my ten times less frequent code word to appear once in my random sample. Sampling 2 million words is only 10 people reading 20,000 words per day for 10 days—easily within the capabilities of the Intelligence services of the time.

Basically, code words are not really easy to guess, if you’re on the outside looking in and relatively easy to detect in usage if you’re on the inside looking out. That’s probably why professional security services of the various nations use them.

Larry said...

Part 4.

7. “What evidence do you have that Aquarius is a UFO related project, other than the documents without a provenance and a couple of dubious sources who claim otherwise?”

None. I didn’t say that it was a UFO related project, only that it was a bona fide code word protected project. Which is exactly what the NSA said. The Aquarius telex actually didn’t say it was a UFO related project, either. It simply included the name in a document that was ostensibly about UFOs; then ufologists jumped to the conclusion that it MUST be a UFO related project. Not necessarily so; it could be a project dealing with means and methods of intelligence collection and dissemination. Considering it’s held by the NSA, that’s pretty much what you’d expect.

The only point I’m trying to make really, is that just because you think—probably correctly—that the document was manufactured by Moore and a couple of cronies, that does not mean that every asserted fact, idea, or word contained within in it is false and was manufactured by them, ab initio.

Just because this document is the first instance you know of where the term Majestic-Twelve appeared in public and the provenance of the document begins with Moore, that does not mean that Moore made the term up. There is the possibility that he heard it from some other source and is repeating it (apparently in a garbled form—other information in the document appears to be garbled, such as confusing NSA with NASA.)

What evidence or logic do you use to choose between the possibility that he made up the term Majestic-Twelve out of his own head and the possibility that he is repeating a term he heard from some other source?

Unknown said...

Hey Kevin-

The Roswell "crash" made it into the newspapers and radio news of its time, so one cannot deny that something happened, no matter what it was.

However, since you guys are SO fascinated by the MJ-12 construct, WHY NOT spend weeks on Allende, brother?

Terry the Censor said...

Has an actual historian ever looked into this issue?

KRandle said...

Chuck -

Because Allende (aka Carl Allen) admitted the hoax.